NCC mulling refrigerating downtown end of Rideau Canal
The CEO of the National Capital Commission (NCC) says the Crown corporation is seriously mulling artificially freezing the northern end of the Rideau Canal to make skating conditions more reliable in the winter.
Ice conditions on 'iconic' Ottawa attraction have become less reliable due to climate change
CBC News
·
Listen to this article
Estimated 3 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
The CEO of the National Capital Commission (NCC) says the Crown corporation is seriously mulling artificially freezing the northern end of the Rideau Canal to make skating conditions more reliable in the winter.
Tobi Nussbaum told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning on Thursday that the NCC is acting on a feasibility study that recommends using refrigeration pipes embedded in a concrete slab to help keep the skateway surface frozen, similar to refrigerated outdoor rinks.
The NCC is looking at an approximately 900-metre stretch of the canal from the Corktown Footbridge at Somerset Street W. to the National Arts Centre. Nussbaum said that section is the skateway's busiest, and also the most difficult to freeze naturally.
"We're going to pursue that," Nussbaum said. "[There's] a lot more work to do in terms of figuring out the details."
He said refrigerating that section of the canal could triple the number of days it's open for skating.
WATCH | From 2024: What does it mean when the canal's not skateable?:
Can it truly be an Ottawa winter without the Rideau Canal skateway?
January 20, 2024|
Duration
5:17
For decades, the Rideau Canal Skateway has served as a quintessential part of winters in Ottawa. But last year, a warm, wet winter led to the canal not opening at all. People who spoke with CBC News expressed concern about the skateway’s future as a business hub, a tourist hotspot and a place to create fond memories.The canal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and lynchpin of Ottawa tourism in the winter, has mostly relied on nature to freeze the skateway's 7.8-kilometre length since the NCC started clearing the ice in 1971.
Recently, the NCC commissioned a series of reports on the potential effects of climate change on the attractions and events it oversees in Ottawa-Gatineau. One study predicted the skating season on the Rideau Canal will gradually start later and end sooner, with fewer than 20 skating days by the 2050s unless greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced.
According to a detailed analysis commissioned by the NCC in 2021, the average skating season was around 46 days.
That was before 2023 when conditions were so poor that it didn't open for skating at all. The following year it opened just 10 days. Skating conditions rebounded the following two seasons.
An 'iconic symbol of Canada'
Nussbaum said it's too early to know the cost of artificially freezing a nearly kilometre-long section of the canal, though it would be expensive and beyond what the NCC could afford on its own.
But he said the investment would be well worth it.
"It's an iconic symbol of Canada," Nussbaum said. "To allow visitors from across the country to know when they come to the nation's capital, they have the option of skating, I think is really, really important."
Nussbaum said the soonest that such a system could be installed would be the early 2030s.
LISTEN | Nussbaum on the idea:
Ottawa Morning8:58Are there other ways to freeze the canal for skating every year?
CEO of the National Capital Commission, Tobi Nussbaum, talks about climate change impact on the canal, and what options the NCC is looking into to freeze it artificially.KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.